Chapter 48

July, 2016

Avengers Facility, Upstate New York

Over the next few days, Maggie and Tony fell into an easy routine. He arrived at her cell in the morning with two cups of coffee and the metal bracelet – which she had taken to calling the Manacle, just to make him scowl – and then they would leave together.

They never ran into another person in the hallways. Maggie was secretly glad that F.R.I.D.A.Y. always cleared the way for them, because she knew she must look like a mental patient with her pale scrubs and the Manacle with its glowing green light on her wrist. She did sometimes see evidence of other people working and living in the Facility – once or twice she heard the distant shouts and footsteps of a training drill, and occasionally she saw an abandoned mug or sheaf of papers as she and Tony walked through the abandoned spaces.

Apparently there had been seventeen complaints filed the first day that Maggie was released from her cell, thanks to F.R.I.D.A.Y. politely but forcefully removing personnel from all over the facility as she and Tony wandered around. So usually they went to one area and stayed there – the Avengers' common area lounges, or the kitchen, but usually Tony's workshop.

Most of the time they worked on their idea for Rhodey's armor, while F.R.I.D.A.Y. helped and Dum-E and U tried to help. Tony did have other ongoing projects, however, so sometimes he would sit at his bench and work on those while Maggie played with the incredible, ultra-modern machines he had lying around. He seemed amused by her wonder.

They were in the workshop, working on separate things, when Tony glanced up and said:

"Y'know, the workshop back at the tower has all the really fun stuff, this stuff's all for Avengers business." His face darkened at the mention of the Avengers.

"More fun than this?" Maggie asked, poking her head out of an enormous holographic blueprint of a rocket, which she was going through component by component.

Tony snorted at the sight of his sister standing in the middle of a holographic rocket. "Well the home interface is the same as here, but I've got cars. And the prototype for B.A.R.F. It's stands for Binarily-"

"-Augmented Retro Framing, I know," she finished, with a small smile. "Terrible acronym, by the way. I looked it up when you announced it." His face flickered at the reminder that Maggie knew so many details of his life when he still didn't know a lot about hers. "It's for re-framing traumatic memories, right? I looked into that, it's clever – using the talk-therapy principle while stimulating the hippocampus and adding audio-visual stimuli." She smiled at him, but then she realized something and her smile dimmed. "I'm sorry you had to invent it in the first place."

He shrugged. "You sure seem to know a lot about psychotherapy."

Her attention was already turning back to her rocket. "Well I'm like you, I imagine – it's something I learned by necessity."

Tony frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted.

"Boss, Happy's on the line about an urgent matter that's just cropped up at the tower. You'll need to head over there."

He sighed. "Is it Happy's definition of urgent, or yours?"

"Both."

Maggie looked up. "Happy?"

"Used to be my bodyguard, he's head of security now."

"Because you invented the armor and suddenly needed a bodyguard a lot less than you did before, right?"

"Right." He put down the body armor prototype he was working on and got to his feet. Maggie reluctantly shut down the rocket holograph – if Tony had to go, she knew she had to go back to her cell. Though that didn't explain the speculative look he was shooting her.

"What's up?" she asked, ducking around Dum-E.

He glanced down at his workbench, tapping his fingers, then seemed to come to a decision. He met her eyes. "Look, you can go back to your room while I'm away, or… I can get you a new chaperone."

"Who?"

"How about Pepper?"

Maggie swallowed, painfully aware that they were both thinking about the last time Maggie and Pepper had been in a room together. Tony didn't seem too mad at her for losing it in front of his girlfriend, but… "Would Pepper want to?"

Tony nodded. "She's been…" he glanced at the ceiling, as if looking for someone to drop in and help him. "She's been asking about you."

"She has?"

"Yeah. Somehow, while you were yelling at me, she got the idea in her head that she likes you."

Maggie blinked. Pepper Potts had seen her at her worst, and she liked her?

"Yes or no, Mag-Lev?" Tony prompted, and she suddenly remembered he had somewhere to be.

"I, uh… yes, okay. If she's alright with it." She shook herself. "Also, that nickname was a stretch."

Tony walked Maggie to an office space on the second floor, where Pepper Potts was sitting on a swivel chair, tapping away at a smartphone. When the door opened she looked up and flashed a brilliant smile, glancing between Tony and Maggie, but she didn't say anything. F.R.I.D.A.Y. must have given her a heads up.

Tony made an awkward gesture, opened his mouth, and then closed it. He was fidgeting, clearly eager to be off but not wanting to leave before he was sure Maggie wasn't going to start shouting. Pepper raised her eyebrows, still smiling.

Maggie twisted her fingers into the hem of her shirt. "Um. Hello," she looked up and met the other woman's eyes. "Sorry I said I'd kill you."

Pepper's smile grew wider. "That's perfectly alright." She looked over at Tony and nodded at him. "We'll be okay, Tony, go." When he hesitated she made a shoo-ing gesture. "Don't stress out Happy even more, you know he's still grumbling about the thing with the kid."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Well that's not a very Asset-Manager-y attitude, is it?" At Maggie's questioning look he shrugged. "Happy's swinging for a promotion. Anyway, you…" he pointed at Maggie, but couldn't seem to think of what to say. After an uncomfortably long pause, in which she just stared at him with a raised eyebrow, he ended with: "be good."

"Ew," she muttered.

"Yeah, I didn't like it either." At that he spun on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving Pepper and Maggie alone together.

Maggie turned around and eyed the CEO of Stark Industries, taking in her appearance. She looked pleased to see Maggie, her body language open and her eyes glinting with amusement.

Maggie steeled herself. "It's nice to meet you too," she said.

Pepper cocked her head. "Oh, I…"

"I didn't say it back, last time," she explained, and moved to sit across the table from her. "Because… well, I just didn't. But it is nice to meet you." She kept her eyes fixed on Pepper's, showing her that she meant it.

The other woman smiled, her eyes warm. "Thank you. You know, I can see a lot of similarities between you and Tony, but you're very different in other ways."

"It's the assassin thing, isn't it?" Maggie suggested.

Pepper looked stricken, then caught the teasing glint in Maggie's eye and laughed. "Well, that too. I was going to say that it seems like it's easier for you to be… open, with how you're feeling." She shrugged. "Tony struggles with that sometimes. Though I'm glad he came and talked to you, and that you both managed to figure things out."

Maggie glanced down at her lap. She didn't know quite what to say to that.

Pepper continued. "Well, at the risk of sounding like your babysitter, what would you like to do today?"

She smiled. "I could eat?"

"That sounds like a great idea. Come with me, I know one of the kitchenettes has Italian leftovers."

At first things were a little awkward between Pepper and Maggie – they didn't really have much to talk about besides Tony. That being said, Pepper was refreshingly tactful when it came to Maggie's past – she didn't ignore it, but she looked at her without judgement or pity. Maggie could see why Tony liked her.

In an effort to find some topic of conversation as they ate pasta in an abandoned kitchenette, Pepper asked Maggie if she had any hobbies.

Maggie shrugged. "I build things."

When she looked up she was alarmed to see that just those three words had made Pepper emotional: her eyes were gleaming and she was looking at Maggie with a watery smile. "Of course you do," she murmured.

Desperate not to make Tony's girlfriend cry again on their second meeting, Maggie cast about the room for a change of topic. She spotted a painting on the other side of the room and blurted out: "That artwork, it's post-impressionist, right?"

Pepper blinked and looked over her shoulder at the painting, which depicted a vividly colored forest, with geometric shapes woven into the trees. When she looked back, her eyes were wide. "I… yes. You're interested in art?"

Maggie ducked her head to take another bite of her pasta, giving herself some time to reply. Because she'd just realized she'd have to explain how she got interested in art. And as much as she didn't want to upset Pepper again, she wasn't going to pretend that Bucky didn't exist, that he wasn't important to her. She closed her eyes briefly, picturing another painting hundreds of miles away: a soft blue dress, pale skin, a letter hidden in shadows. Stop thinking so much.

When she opened her eyes, she met Pepper's quizzical look with a small smile. "Yes, um… Bucky-" she saw the flash of recognition and surprise on Pepper's face, but kept going- "Bucky wanted to go to an art museum, two years ago. I'd never really thought about art before, but I enjoyed the museum, so after that I read some books, and…" she opened her palms, as if to say so here we are.

Pepper cocked her head. "What's your opinion on modern art?"

And that set them off. For well over an hour they compared their thoughts and feelings about different styles of art, talking about pieces they'd seen and pieces they wanted to see. Pepper knew a lot more about art than Maggie did, but she wasn't one of the 'pretentious assholes', and Maggie found herself learning a lot from her. Pepper described her favorite pieces in the Met Museum and the Louvre, and explained why the Mona Lisa was a nightmare when it came to historical art preservation.

Once they'd finished eating, Pepper set away their dishes and then said: "There aren't a lot of pieces in this facility, but I know for a fact there's a great Kusama collection downstairs. I think you'll like it."

Maggie followed Pepper out of the kitchenette.

Late that evening, Tony arrived back to find his sister and his girlfriend sitting side-by-side on the Avengers' common room couch, sipping glasses of red wine as Pepper complained about businessmen who made sexist remarks to her face in professional settings. Maggie was chiming in with calculations of how difficult it would be to locate said businessmen and throw them into a volcano. Pepper was a little past tipsy and Maggie was, of course, stone-cold-sober.

Once Maggie had been walked back to her room and Pepper and Tony went to bed, Pepper asked:

"Aren't you going to ask how it went?"

Tony sighed. "I'm kind of terrified of the answer."

She laughed into his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of her alcohol-flushed skin even through his t-shirt. "Why?"

"I don't know, Pep, I mean… we've gotten along with each other pretty well so far, and she's annoyingly smart, but…" he tipped his head back, watching the ceiling. "She spent most of her life being brainwashed by a bunch of crazy asshole neo-Nazis. That's not something that goes away as soon as you escape."

Pepper hiccuped a little, but he could tell that she had her serious-face on without even looking at her. "I know that," she said softly. "But she's a good person, Tony, I think you and I both know that. And she's… she's funny, in her own odd way, and she's thoughtful, and honest, and-"

"So you like her, then," he said drily.

Pepper snuggled closer to him. "I do."

"More than me?" Tony waited for the old flash of jealousy to hit, the resentment toward Maggie that had fueled the latter half of his teenage years, but it didn't come. Huh.

He felt Pepper smile into his arm. "Well she knows that Jackson Pollock's Springs period refers to a place, and not a season." She laughed at his offended huff, and then reached up to rest her hand over his chest, where the arc reactor used to be. "I like Maggie, Tony. But I love you."

Two days later, Rhodey walked into Tony's workshop.

He'd been expecting to find Tony with his nose in a project, probably working on exosuit modifications even when Rhodey had specifically told him not to. What he wasn't expecting was to walk in just as a repulsor blast scorched across the workshop, knocking over a row of shelves in an ear-splitting crash. Rhodey flinched and ducked, then turned to see Tony doubled over in his chair laughing as Maggie Stark glared at him from the ground.

She was wearing a silver War Machine gauntlet on her right hand, and her hair was sprawled across her face – the blast must have originated from her, then, and knocked her down in the process.

Rhodey stared. He'd seen Maggie at the airport, and from the med bay window when she arrived, but he'd never really been close enough to take in her appearance. She looked a little like the dark haired, bright-eyed girl he remembered, but mostly she reminded him of Tony – the way she glared, the way she dusted herself off and got back to her feet, disgruntled but determined to try again.

"You should see your face!" Tony laughed, as Maggie carefully flexed her fingers in the gauntlet, frowning. "U, please tell me you recorded that." The robot trilled, bobbing its handheld camera up and down.

Maggie opened her mouth and Rhodey could just see from the light in her eyes that she had a witty comeback, but then F.R.I.D.A.Y. interrupted:

"Boss, you've got a visitor."

Maggie's head jerked up and her eyes widened at the sight of him in the doorway. Tony looked over his shoulder.

"Oh hey, Rhodey, what's up?"

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "'What's up'?"

Maggie cleared her throat, eyes fixed on him. "Hi."

He glanced back at her. She was watching his face closely for any kind of reaction, her body language hyper-focused and anxious. She'd been annoyed before she noticed him, but at least she'd seemed at ease, with laughter in her eyes. Now, just with his presence, he'd made her tense up and close off.

"Hi," he replied. He'd intended it to sound encouraging, and it must have worked because the tightness around her eyes loosened a little.

She tucked her hair behind her ear, still watching him, and carefully pulled the War Machine gauntlet off her hand. "Um, this might be a bit soon, but…" she backed up a few steps, then crouched to retrieve something from a shelf beside Tony's workbench. She straightened, holding what looked like a metal sheet, and flashed a nervous smile. "I was just about to put this up."

It was a simple steel plate, about three feet in length, and it had a single word burned into it. Antirhodos.

Tony burst out laughing again. Rhodey's mouth dropped open. "Seriously? You remember that?"

Maggie smiled shyly. "Of course I do. I remember I was kind of jealous of you, actually. It's why I said it in the first place."

Tony stopped laughing, and Rhodey blinked. Jealous?

"I'm really sorry you got hurt, Rhodey," Maggie murmured, her eyes open and earnest.

He shook his head automatically. "It wasn't your fault." He hesitated, then added: "It wasn't anyone's fault."

A shadow crossed Tony's face at that, but he didn't say anything. Maggie's face softened, and she cocked her head consideringly. After a long moment, she added: "I'm also sorry for kicking your ass back at the airport."

Tony started laughing again, though not as freely as he had before. Rhodey rolled his eyes and walked over to Maggie. "No hard feelings," he said with a smile, and then opened his arms.

The last shreds of tension slipped out of her frame and she accepted his hug, giving him a glimpse of her smiling face before her arms were wrapped around his chest, still clutching the metal sheet in one hand. She was slightly taller than him, and a frown pinched Rhodey's brow when he remembered that the last time they'd spoken, she'd barely come up to his knee.

"It's good to see you again, Maggie," he told her, and her arms tightened in response. She was strong.

"You too." Her voice was soft.

After another few seconds, Tony made a disgusted sound. "Okay, this is weird."

Maggie chuckled and pulled away. "So how's the Air Force been treating you, Colonel Rhodes?"

"Not too bad," he grinned, and only felt a small flash of pain at the reminder of another job affected by his injury.

Maggie seemed to sense the touchy topic though, and she changed it. "I looked you up, after getting out of HYDRA," she said. He almost flinched at the casual way she brought it up, but he supposed it would be exhausting to dance around it all day. "Thank you for looking out for Tony all this time."

Tony scoffed. "I'm perfectly capable of looking out for myse-"

"It's all good," Rhodey interrupted. Neither of them looked at Tony. "I got a sweet ride out of it, so…" he gestured at the War Machine armor across the workshop, then noticed that it was looking less like it was being repaired and more like it was being pulled apart. He frowned.

Maggie suddenly seemed to notice the exosuit attached to his legs, and she took a step back to see them properly. He tensed slightly, but she didn't look pitying. If anything, she looked… excited?

"Oh, those are cool!" she exclaimed, and moved as if to circle him, but then hesitated and glanced up at his face. "Uh, can I-"

He rolled his eyes. She was too much like Tony for her own good. "Go ahead."

Grinning, Maggie circled him, running an eye over the exosuit in a way that Rhodey was all too familiar with, after having spent years watching Tony make and admire technology.

"Minimalist, I like it. Do you get lateral movement? What's the restriction on speed?" She squinted. "Why are there lights?"

Tony rolled his chair over. "The lights are power sources, and they look cool."

Rhodey cleared his throat. "That's actually why I'm here, Tony. Uh, you said to come back with feedback?"

Tony's face lit up. "You want the Mark II!"

He frowned. "I thought I told you not to design anything until I decided what I wanted."

Tony opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then turned to point an accusing finger at Maggie, who was polishing the Antirhodos sign. "It was her fault, she had an idea for the War Machine armor and we realized it could be adapted for the exosuit, so…" he spread his hands and gave Rhodey a beseeching look. "Don't look at me like that, honeybunch, we didn't build anything! Just… jotted down some ideas."

Rhodey glanced at Maggie. "You did?"

She shrugged. "I've got some experience with designing tech that intuits human physiology," she said. To demonstrate, she lifted one foot and extended her Adamantium heel spur for a second. Rhodey stared at the flash of metal, and then glanced out of the corner of his eye at Tony, who had a pained expression on his face. He knew they were both thinking about the videos they'd seen at the Canada base, of Maggie's exposed bone and flesh.

She sensed their moods darken. "… Not that I'm planning on putting tech inside you," she added, then cocked her head. "Unless you're into that kind of thing."

Both Tony and Rhodey whipped around to give her horrified looks, and Maggie laughed so hard that she dropped the Antirhodos sign on the workshop floor.

Rhodes spent the afternoon in the workshop with Maggie and Tony, looking over their designs for Mark II of the exosuit and suggesting his own ideas, and watching bemusedly as they bickered over their initial designs for the War Machine update.

He felt like he should pinch himself – he could hardly believe that he was sitting in a room with both Stark siblings, alive and joking. It was hardly as he'd pictured it twenty five years ago – his injury, for example, and the gravity in Maggie's eyes that spoke of a life of pain – but it was real, when for years he'd been convinced it was impossible.

Maggie was hard to get a read on. She obviously cared about Tony and enjoyed being here, but when Tony wasn't looking Rhodey could see flashes of pain in her expression, and he remembered that she'd lived a life of her own for two years after HYDRA. He remembered Tony's angry eyes as he explained how Maggie had defended Barnes. Rhodey wondered what she'd left behind.

"So does the spider-guy not live here?" Maggie asked, shaking Rhodey out of his thoughts. He glanced up and saw her eyeing down Tony, who was avoiding her gaze.

"No, uh, he was kind of a temporary recruitment."

"Hm," she replied, propping her chin on her hand. "He was young."

Tony sighed. "Yeah. He is."

Rhodey narrowed his eyes. Tony had given him the basics about the kid, Peter Parker. He wasn't happy that an actual child had been signed up to the Avengers, however temporarily, and they'd almost fought about it. But there'd been so much fighting recently, neither of them had had the energy. Eventually Rhodey realized that the kid was going to be fighting anyway, regardless of Tony's involvement.

But Maggie wasn't cleared to know about Parker. She sensed that the topic was off-limits, and she smoothly transitioned back into discussing various measurements and readings that needed to be taken from Rhodey before the armor designs could progress. Rhodey nodded along as if he understood half of what she and Tony were saying, and watched the strange, seamless verbal dance they were doing. They weren't hiding from each other, but after just a few weeks of being in each other's proximity they'd learned each other's limits, knowing when to push and when to back away. Rhodey wondered if this was what it could have been like all along, during those long, lonely years that Tony filled with drinking and weapons, and felt another flash of anger towards HYDRA.

Maggie and Tony showed Rhodey the holographic blueprint of the next War Machine suit, their eyes alight, and his anger slowly faded. For a pair of siblings with so much tragic past between them, Rhodey didn't think they were doing too bad.

When Rhodey left, sighing as Maggie stuck the Antirhodos sign outside the workshop, Tony turned to face Maggie. Rhodey's visit, while it had turned out far better than he'd expected, had reminded him of some things he'd been trying to ignore.

"So."

Maggie cocked her head at the uncertain look on his face. "So?"

He sighed. "I've got some… stuff."

"Stuff?" She could see him struggling for words. "Drugs? Piles of money? Dead bodies?"

"No, you dork," he cut her off. "Your stuff."

"My stuff."

"From Germany."

And just like that, Maggie's face shuttered, pain and shock flickering across her expression before she managed to shut it down. He grimaced.

"My stuff," she breathed, taking a step backwards. She lifted one shaking hand to her forehead, as if checking for a fever. Her eyes closed. "Where is it?"

Tony watched her carefully. "The JTTF impounded everything, but when the case was wrapped up they turned it all over to the Accords, and consequently the Avengers. It's in an acquisitions room, here at the compound."

Her eyes opened. "Can I…"

Tony inclined his head. "Of course."

It was a short walk across the facility to the acquisitions room, but they didn't speak. Maggie had resigned her old belongings as lost, forever to collect dust in someone's impound. She hadn't thought they would be here. She supposed her things, few as they were, wouldn't have seemed very important to anyone else.

As they walked along a footpath outside, Maggie felt the back of her scalp prickle and looked over her shoulder to see a group of people looking out a nearby window at her. She couldn't make the details of their faces out, but their scrutiny felt like a brand. She ducked her head.

Tony followed her gaze back to the facility windows, then lifted his watch. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., what happened to the lights out protocol?"

Maggie looked back over her shoulder just in time to see the window in question ripple and darken, cutting off all sight.

"My apologies, boss," came F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice from the watch.

They made it to the administration building, and as they stepped inside the sudden lack of sunshine on the back of Maggie's neck made her shiver.

After a few turns down gleaming corridors, they came to a door labelled Acquisitions. Part of Maggie was concerned about operational security when things were labelled so clearly, but she had no doubt that there was security in these walls and doors that even she might not be able to crack.

The room itself, once F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave them access, was massive. It reminded her of a police evidence room - she'd been in a handful of those, during her life as a weapon. Metal shelves lined the room, soaring up to the high ceiling, with neatly labelled cardboard boxes on the shelves. There was a single burnished steel table on the other side of the room, gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

Tony glanced at Maggie out of the corner of his eye. "Most stuff usually goes to the Department of Damage Control, but this place ends up with the stuff that's not dangerous or that could turn out to be useful for us."

Maggie didn't respond, too disturbed by the idea of her things being packed up and locked away like evidence or historical artifacts. Silently, Tony led her toward a shelf near the back.

She instantly picked out which boxes had been recently placed: the cardboard was fresh, and there was no sign of dust on the boxes or the shelf around them. She focused on three in particular, zeroing in on their fresh manila labels:

Wyvern Combat Gear and Personal Possessions. Seized at Leipzig/Halle Airport, Germany; June 24th, 2016.

Contents of Volkswagen Beetle EVA0711. Seized at Leipzig/Halle Airport, Germany; June 24th, 2016.

It seemed there was plenty of stuff seized that day at the airport, but Maggie's eyes skipped across most of those boxes and landed on a third:

James Buchanan Barnes Personal Possessions. Seized in Bucharest, Romania; June 23rd, 2016.

Maggie knew what was in that one, thanks to the seizure list she'd hacked. The sight of the cardboard box with its neat black lettering made her heart leap into her mouth.

She wondered if these things would have gone to Damage Control if Tony or someone else hadn't requested that they be delivered to the Avengers Facility.

Tony was leaning against a shelf a few feet away, watching her. When she looked up, he grimaced and said: "Yeah, I really can't leave you alone in here." She merely nodded, and looked back at the shelf.

Slowly, methodically, Maggie slid boxes out from the shelves. First she took the box of her gear, and set it on the metal table. Then she went back for the VW Beetle box. When she went back for the third box Tony stiffened and his eyes darkened, but he didn't say anything. She set that box on the table too, her fingers smoothing along the cardboard edges.

She opened the combat gear box first. It was packed neatly, with her goggles, gauntlets, and energy blaster sitting on the bottom. The combat gear she'd bought from the sports store was missing, and she guessed that it had been cut away from her unconscious, bleeding body after the airport fight. She didn't exactly want the reminder. She lifted the wrist-mounted energy blaster out of the box and dangled it at Tony, raising her eyebrow.

He shrugged. "All weapons in this room get deactivated before they come in. What are you going to do, throw it at me?" His eyes narrowed. "Where did you get that, anyway?"

"Barton."

His brow furrowed. "Figures. I made that, y'know. It's just a prototype, because no one else on the team wanted to incorporate it into their combat gear – they either had something similar, or didn't want it getting in their way."

Maggie could sense the sharp edges of betrayal seeping into his voice, so she kept her face neutral as she eyed the black circlet of the blaster. "It was good, very intuitive," she eventually said, returning it to the box. "I could make it better." Tony scoffed, but didn't start arguing with her like he normally might. They were both very conscious of the boxes she hadn't opened yet.

She was about to put the lid back on that box, when she caught a glint of silver and paused. She dipped her slightly trembling fingers back in and retrieved the culprit: a simple sterling silver necklace chain, with a single pearl pendant dangling from the end.

The breath stilled in her chest. She put the lid back on the box, still staring at the necklace, and her other hand came up to cradle the pearl.

I earned every dollar that went into that. I didn't want HYDRA to have any part of it.

Bucky's words echoed in her head. Maggie had to bite the inside of her cheek to push back the tears. She'd worn this necklace every day over the past year. She'd thought it was lost in the chaos after the airport fight, and finding it felt like having a piece of herself returned as well. She didn't have Bucky back, but she had this: a physical, tangible reminder that what they'd had was real.

She brushed her hair to one side and clipped the chain around her neck, ignoring Tony's searching gaze, and tucked the pearl into her scrubs.

Feeling shaky and brittle, Maggie slid that box aside and reached for the next: the VW Beetle box. She raised her eyebrows at just how thorough the JTTF had been: her backpack was in there as she'd expected, but there were also empty bottles, food wrappers, and assorted articles of clothing that she and the other car's occupants had discarded in exchange for their battle gear. She lifted her backpack out of the trash, her face grim, and unzipped the main pocket.

It felt like years since she'd seen her things: the beat-up laptop, various tools and tech, false IDs. Her silver iPod was tucked near the bottom, with headphones wrapped around it. In the front pocket she found a small bundle of postcards, a pair of scratched safety goggles, a faded plush toy flower, and her Rubik's cube. Throat tight, Maggie removed the laptop, IDs and most of the tech and returned it all to the cardboard box. She kept the rest, running her fingers over her things as if to remind herself of her own identity.

Tony stood silently against the metal shelves, watching his sister sort through a single backpack that held everything she possessed in the world.

Then he watched as she reached for a box full of things that didn't belong to her. He didn't move to stop her, though, just observed the thin line of her lips and the grief in her eyes that she tried to hide.

There was another backpack in the James Buchanan Barnes box. Maggie's breathing stuttered as she reached for it, and she had to press her eyes shut for a moment to get a hold of herself. Gritting her teeth, she unzipped the backpack and pulled out its contents. A dogeared, dusty copy of El Hobbit. A virtual planetarium, faded with use. A notebook half-filled with words, which she intended never to read, but only to protect. A Swiss Army Knife.

She couldn't help but smile as she retrieved that last item, remembering a safehouse on the other side of the world, where Bucky had laughed and joked and kissed her, because he could. Her heart wrenched, but she tightened her grip on the smooth metal lines of the tool to keep herself grounded.

She watched herself take Bucky's things and place them carefully in her own backpack, barely conscious of having made the decision to do so. She already knew what she was going to do with the backpack: she would take it to her room – her cell – and tuck it carefully under her new bed. She would pretend that F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't know it was there, and she would protect it, because this backpack was all she had left of a life she didn't think she'd ever deserved, and would likely never have again.

She slipped the Swiss Army Knife into her pocket, though. She supposed she probably wasn't allowed to carry around a weapon, but if no one stopped her then she wasn't going to give it up. She wanted to keep it close to her.

Once the boxes were put away, Maggie pulled her backpack over her shoulders and turned to face her brother. His face was heavy and lined, but he didn't look like he was going to stop her taking the backpack. If anything, he just looked tired.

"And my wings?" she asked, her voice low and carefully neutral.

He grimaced. "In the workshop."

She nodded. She'd figured. "Table up the back corner, right?"

"Yeah," he sighed.

They left the acquisitions room together and walked back outside, into the sun. They walked in silence, but it wasn't necessarily uncomfortable. Maggie could tell that Tony wasn't ready yet to ask about those two years she'd spent outside of HYDRA. He might not ever be ready. It dug at the part of her that desperately missed Bucky, that just wanted to be normal, but she knew she had to accept Tony's choices and limits. It was the least she could do.

At least he'd given her back these small reminders of her past, and was going to let her keep them despite the pain and frustration that flickered across his face.

Back in the workshop, Maggie headed straight for the back corner. There was a metal box on the floor beside the canvas-covered bench and she opened it first, ignoring the way Tony's tension crackled in the air.

She took one look at the items in the box before bile rose into her throat and she had to take a step backwards, breathing sharply through her nose.

A shield. And an arm.

Tony stepped toward her, his arm outstretched and his mouth opening, but she merely shook her head and raised a hand. I need space.

He nodded silently and backed away, returning to his workbench and sitting down, eyeing her from across the workshop.

Once she had control of herself, Maggie knelt beside the metal box and looked in again. There was the arm, Bucky's arm, its silver surface scorched and dirty. It was torn off just below the shoulder, plating and wires seared away. The jagged end was ugly, broken. It was only metal, but she knew the arm's removal would have been excruciating for Bucky. She knew exactly how it would have felt.

Jaw clenched, she reached in and ran her fingers down Bucky's arm, over the inter-connected plates and joints, down to the cool fingers, loose and open. She remembered what it felt like to be held by this arm. She remembered what it felt like to have this metal hand in hers. She used to be able to make Bucky shiver by running her fingernails along certain grooves, and she spent another minute finding them. She remembered the way she used to listen to the faint hum of machinery at night, in their bed. She remembered joking with him on their kitchen counter: do you think you could convince the arm to run away with me?

Well. Here she was with the arm, and Bucky was gone.

Maggie pulled her fingers away. The arm was a dead thing now, a lump of metal with no love in it. It was nobody's fault, but she didn't want to torture herself any longer by pressing her fingers against the cold limb and wishing for the man who'd been attached to it.

She didn't spare a glance for Steve's shield, dirty and scratched. My father made that shield.

She rose to her feet and turned to the metal bench, running an eye over the lumpy canvas. She felt numb after all the things she'd seen today, but she knew if she stopped now then she'd never get up the courage to pull that canvas away. So she did it, the material course against her fingers as it slipped over the top of the bench and fell to the floor.

She'd tried to picture what her wings might look like, now that one of them was broken. Images had flashed behind her eyes as she tried to sleep, of shredded circuitry and twisted metal, dripping with blood.

She'd been more or less accurate with her guesses, minus the blood. Someone must have cleaned it away. One of the wings was whole – a little singed and scratched, with rips in the webbing, but nothing a quick service wouldn't fix. The other wing was torn in two, and the sight of it sent phantom pain flickering up and down her spine.

Maggie looked at the broken wing for a long time, running her eyes over the frayed mooring connection point, the jagged metal edges, and the subtle gouges that marked where T'Challa's claws had gripped and pulled.

She didn't touch her wings. She was too afraid that they'd feel lifeless, like Bucky's arm had. She'd had these wings for most of her life – they'd seen her through her life as the Wyvern, and they'd borne her to freedom when she broke away from HYDRA. Her wings had seen her through nightmares and heartbreak and love. And now they were lying under canvas in Tony's workshop like a broken machine.

As Maggie looked over the torn circuitry, her fingers itched to fix the damage. She didn't think she'd be allowed to.

She was so busy staring that it took her a few moments to notice that Tony had appeared at the other end of the table. He was watching her with some unreadable emotion in his eyes, complex and conflicted.

After a long moment, his face flickered and then he said: "Aren't you going to get your photos?"

Maggie froze, and met his eyes. For a split second she felt horrified that anyone – let alone her brother – had found the items she'd tried to protect over all her other possessions. Then she felt a flash of anger – was that why he'd been returning her things, to confront her with this? But those hot, initial flashes of emotion faded, and she just felt sad. Sad that Tony had had to see that, without any warning and so soon after having learned the truth about Bucky, and sad at the obvious conflict on his face – he didn't want to fight with her about this. He just wanted everything to be in the open.

Sighing, Maggie turned back to the bench and reached for the hidden compartment in her right wing. She slowly cracked it open, and pulled out the photos and the hand-drawn portrait. She kept them face down for a moment, preparing herself.

Tony gripped the edge of the metal table as she turned over the photos. He didn't even glance down at them, he was too focused on her face. He didn't need to anyway - each image was burned into his mind.

Maggie normally kept her feelings hidden, particularly when talking about Barnes, but she didn't seem to be able to now. As she looked down at the photos a dizzying array of emotions glimmered in her eyes. Her face softened, and her eyes traced each frame like they contained the entire world. Her fingers brushed against her own image in the portrait, safety goggles and all, with love etched in every line of the artwork.

She looked back at the photobooth photos, eyeing those past versions of she and Barnes, happy and wrapped up in each others' touch. A small smile flickered at the corner of her mouth before she shut it down.

And then, suddenly, she was crying; silent tears rolling down her cheeks as she clutched the photos.

Tony didn't know what to do. His chest was bursting with a confusing inferno of rage, grief, and dismay, so he turned around without a word and left the workshop.

Maggie believed Tony when he had said he wanted to be her brother, so she wasn't afraid when he left. This wasn't the start of another age of them not speaking again, it was just… space.

With her cheeks wet with tears and her lips pressed against a glossy piece of paper, Maggie was glad she was alone.

When Tony came back an hour later the photos were gone, no doubt vanished into her backpack, and Maggie was playing with Dum-E on the other side of the workshop.

They didn't speak about the photos or the backpack for the rest of the day, instead slipping back into their newfound rhythm of invention, engineering and affectionate sarcasm. If they were a little kinder to each other than they normally were, well, neither of them were going to bring it up.